Books Not Reviewed, Morning Thoughts

Good morning. There are a few books which I have read recently that I have not reviewed. The first is The Dragons of Babel by Michael Swanwick. It got a starred review in Publishers Weekly, meaning they really liked it. I enjoyed it a lot as well, but there were a few things in the writing which made me say, this is not for me to review. The main thing which he does that got to me was to do a section on rich fairies. This created the image of Donald Trump in a purple shimmering suit with pointy ears and green skin in my mind. I don't think I could have honestly done the book justice.

Another book which I just read that was very good was Dust by Elizabeth Bear. Once again, I found out that it would be better for others to review this book. There were some odd things in the book which threw me off. For example Elizabeth Bear describes the "New Evolutionary Bible".

Not every book matches with every reviewer. I think sometimes, the wrong writer is chosen to review some books in the popular review sources. I am glad that I have a choice on which books I will review for my site.

I also passed on reading one of Nancy Pearl's choices for books to read, Freedom In Meditation by Patricia Carrington, Ph.D. When I began reading the book, I found it to be quite outdated. It was written in 1977. A lot of has changed in the field of non-religious meditation techniques since the book was written. I think, I may choose another basic meditation book to read that is more current.

Right now, I am reading Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. It is another environmantal and social justice book. Increasingly, environmentalist books are combining with social justice books. I think it is a trend.

I am thinking about how to improve my site. I should probably work on the page load times. Also, I am thinking about how to learn CSS so I can turn this site into a three column site. It would make the site look a lot more professional. I think blogger does not provide a three column template because it would encourage more commercial sites for their free service. Most commercial blogs are three column to allow for more advertising and break up the pattern of the site. This is my main concern.

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A reader suggested that I get rid of some of my widgets to improve load time so I did. Metaxu Lit Cafe although it had a very professional feel to it did very little for the site. I removed the widget.

I found the Bookaholic Blog Ring to be a far better and more interesting site to keep for a blogring. I even look at it sometimes to read the blogs in the ring.

Technorati generated little if any traffic to my site. Although, people like it, it didn't increase the amount of people visiting here.

The five main sources of traffic to this site come from Entrecard, Blogcatalog, Fuelmyblog, Blogger, and Google.

I also decided to work on improving my traffic within my main sources of traffic. I started a Fuelmyblog group on Blogcatalog. Here is the link: http://www.blogcatalog.com/group/fuelmyblog

This increases the circular flow of traffic between different sites. I think the more linked together sites in a network are the more traffic you may get from them. I also joined the Entrecard Group on Blogcatalog. Many people use similar sites.

I also removed the Cafepress store from my site. I have not gotten any buyers in three months for mugs or nick nacks. It took up space.

I am finding Project Wonderful advertisements to be kind of interesting. Many of the people who advertise using Entrecard also use Project Wonderful. This helps create a traffic network interlinking sites. The more interlinked the advertising and widgets are, the more traffic I will get, especially if the sites are focused on a specific subject.